Terry Matthews

Hello! I am Terry and I am a coach to those who have “Decided” to Live Life Aligned and here is a little about me and my journey to success. Or is it really success?

I spent my whole life being that “Good girl” you know, the responsible one

  • Get all A’s
  • Caretaker at an early age and still am – siblings\parents
  • Always did what needed to be done

All of this led me to excel in every area of my life without question – it was my default. It also made me loyal to a fault – staying with the same company for over 30 years.

Even though I had a couple of female role models in my life, the more common experience I had with other women was.. “I made it, so figure it out on your own like I did.” And that is all I ever did, just figured things out.

As if climbing the corporate ladder wasn’t challenging enough, due to a surgery at 22 leaving me unable to have children, I took a multi-year journey through IVF and adoption to create the family of our dreams.

I kept taking on challenges, focusing on that next thing – raising a family and becoming the majority support after my husband’s retirement from police work. Just taking care of everyone and everything as if on autopilot “it was what I expected of myself”.

I finally reached the “highly sought after” executive level. I remember thinking “you have arrived”…. so why did I feel like my GPS got it wrong. Was this really the destination of my choosing?

Here I was hitting mid-life…That’s when I started to ask myself is this it? Is this really what I want? What do I really want?

I remember sitting at a dead stop in traffic one day and feeling so stuck. I had received news over the past week about two friends’ wives who had passed unexpectedly in their 50s. My future began to flash before my eyes…The plans I had with my husband – our golden years…

How would we spend them? Would we reach them together?

That’s when I began to reflect on all that I was compromising on now… all that I was missing. Was this really worth it?

I started to ask myself how quickly can I get out of this/retire? I had never thought about it this way before.

This new urgency and fragility of just how short life is and how I was trading every day toward a “someday” that may not come.

That’s when I decided to do things differently… to live aligned with what’s most important to me even if that meant giving up what I had worked so hard to achieve. So I traded my position and title to live more aligned with my purpose. After a slight panic attack, I breathed deeply… it felt like the first deep breath I had taken in decades! From that point on I designed my life to my agenda.

Now this is exactly what I help others do – to LIVE LIFE ALIGNED!